The rowing endeth

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2003 by Anne Sexton

   The rowing endeth

   I'm mooring my rowboat
   at the dock of the island called God.
   This dock is made in the shape of a fish
   and there are many boats moored
   at many different docks.
   "It's okay," I say to myself,
   with blisters that broke and healed
   and broke and headed--saving
   themselves over and over.
   And salt sticking to my face and arms like
   a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
   I empty myself from my wooden boat
   and onto the flesh of The Island.

   "On with it!" He says and thus
   we squat on the rocks by the sea
   and play--can it be true--a
   game of poker.
   He calls me.
   I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
   He wins because He holds five aces.

   A wild card had been announced
   but I had not beard it
   being in such a state of awe
   when He took out the cards and dealt.
   As he plunks down His five aces
   and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
   He starts to laugh,
   the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
   and into mine,
   and such laughter that He doubles right over me
   laughing a Rejoice Chores at our two triumphs.
   Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
   the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
   The Absurd laughs.

   Dearest dealer,

   I with my royal straight flush,
   love yon so for your wild card,
   that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
   and lucky love.

   --Anne Sexton

From The Awful Rowing Toward God. [C] 1975 by Loring Conant Jr., executor of the estate of Anne Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company All rights reserved.

I VALUE THIS POEM by Anne Sexton because of its sense of totally undeserved, miraculous grace followed by divine hilarity. I identify with the rower who, "with blisters that broke and healed" on her hands, plays a poker hand with God. Like most of us, the rower seems to be both straggling toward God and against God. Holding a royal straight flush, she apparently wins, but then God plunks down an impossible five aces, and trumps her. Lucky for her (and for us), God's been holding a wild card all along (Christ? grace? love? all three?), so God wins. Paradoxically, they both win. And laughter, divine hilarity, rolls from his mouth into hers, "a Rejoice-Chores at our two triumphs." She concludes that the wild card is God's "lucky love"--lucky for all of us.

--Robert Siegel, whose books include In a Pig's Eye and The Beasts & the Elders, is professor emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.